Death Spiral (insurance)
Death spiral is an insurance plan with costs that rapidly increase as a result of changes in the covered population. It is the result of adverse selection in insurance policies where lower risk policy holders choose to change policies or be uninsured. The term is found in the academic literature at least as early as Cutler and Zeckhauser's 1997 paper "Adverse Selection in Health Insurance" which refers explicitly to an "adverse selection death spiral".
Read more about Death Spiral (insurance): Health Insurance Spiral
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or spiral:
“You know, if this is Venus, or some other strange planet, we’re liable to run into some high-domed characters with green blood in their veins who’ll blast at us with their atomic death rayguns, and there we’ll be with these—these poor old-fashioned shootin’ irons.”
—Edward L. Bernds (b. 1911)
“Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)